Hi
I am also a bit puzzled by Child Themes in genesis.
Normally with other wordpress systems i have used you have a theme, then you make a new folder with a style sheet in it that refers to the parent theme and thus you have made a child theme.
Or you have a parent theme that supplies a blank/skeleton of a child theme.
But there does not seem to be any reference to either of these options.

hi kellylise
thanks for replying so fast.
i will read that expanation now. but/so a theme from genesis is considered a childthteme, even though it can be overwritten by an update.
would i use the normal WP method of making a childtheme of a genesis child theme? which could then have a style.css functions.php and template pages?
i’ll go and make a cup of tea and read that link
thanks
tom

hi kellylise
i have looked through nick the geeks site and it does have a lot of info on the functions file and it talks about using this with a child theme – but the one thing is does not mention ( that i can find) is how to set up a child theme.

You would have the folders for both the framework (“genesis”) and the child theme (“genesis-sample”) in your themes folder, and the “genesis-sample” would be your child theme once you activated it.

You wouldn’t make a child theme of the child theme, you’re safe to customize the child theme to your heart’s content — child theme updates are never pushed out to sites, but you can have the framework be updated (which is why you never modify the framework files for customizations!).

You could update a child theme if a new version came out, but typically new minor versions just include CSS cleanup, and are not required for security reasons or anything like that. You can also maintain most of your widgets between different child themes if you switch to a new one.